by rdan Lifted from comments cactus style, by k harris. A public infrastructure spending binge is likely to require lots of petroleum products. This is not a deadly criticism, but is is an issue that could produce a lot of “leakage”. We could offset that, either concurrently or subsequently. Spending a ton of money modernizing […]

The NYT has a long article that MG and spencer mention is worth a careful look…perhaps a post or two. The quote I pulled from the article is the immediate political concern as well as the message that economic arguments need a modern cast to them given our “reality” of stagnant overall income for most […]

Mother Jones has an interactive map on the numbers of military troops over the world from 1950 to 2007. It is of course a map of growth to date.

Lifted from Econbrowser by Menzie Chinn Drilling Offshore to Affect World Oil Prices… and Other Tales from the Iraq-Pakistan Border Various individuals have argued for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) as a means to affect the price of oil. This is true despite this recent assessment by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information […]

Updated Long-Term Projections for Social Security Andrew Biggs in Treatment of uncertainty in new CBO Social Security projections directs our attention to the new release from the Congressional Budget Office. I don’t tend to focus on CBO projections precisely because they are more optimistic than the Trustees’, I don’t want to open the door to […]

The US economy is in a funkBy Peter Morici Troubles at United States banks are making mortgage, credit card and business loans scarcer and more expensive. Falling home prices, rising foreclosures and high gas prices have stalled home building and consumer spending. These problems are exacerbated by the long-festering trade deficits on oil and with […]

NYT Magazine Preview: How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy This Sunday’s New York Times has a very good article on Obama by David Leonhardt.

There is a strange meme in the blogsphere—most recently made in comments here by Movie Guy—that Obama “should have a double-digit lead over McCain at this stage as has been the case with previous presidential primaries.” So I went searching for double-digit leads among two-person Presidential races in the past several elections. August 2004 (Bush […]